Doing the Digging

I just put up a piece that criticizes Howard Kurtz (and others) for not giving the straight dope on the true findings of the Alaska legislative report on the Palins’ efforts to have their ex-brother-in-law fired from the state trooper force.

In my article, I note that Kurtz was kind enough to mention my story from last week on Palin and the Alaska press corps on Sunday’s edition of Reliable Sources. Here’s what he said:

Well, here’s this great tidbit dug up by Columbia Journalism Review. 1993 — this is before Sarah Palin was even mayor — she wrote a letter to The Anchorage Daily News that called that paper a “dangerously biased, yellow, liberal rag.”

I sincerely appreciate the shout-out, but I want to be clear about the “digging” I did to find this anecdote. It comes from a 2006 Palin profile by ADN reporter Tom Kizza that’s easily available on the paper’s website, and in Lexis-Nexis. I linked and credited Kizza elsewhere in my article.

Bottom line is that I didn’t have to spend a minute looking over yellowed 15-year-old papers or scrolling through eye-straining microfilm, and I don’t want to leave any impression that Kurtz’s wording might leave uncorrected.

So that’s that. Please go about your business.

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Clint Hendler is the managing editor of Mother Jones, and a former deputy editor of CJR.

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